Games I Own: Painkiller

Painkiller is a game about frenzy, about being 'in the zone' and about bunny-hopping at 100 miles an hour around gothic castles packed with skeletons and cackling witches. It's a game about violence and speed; the satisfying buzz of a well-executed headshot performed from the hip.

Or, to put it another way, it's a game about 'THUNK!' That's the noise it makes when you fire half a pool-cue across the map and it lands, pinning your enemy's collapsed body to the floor.

THUNK!

Painkiller is not a game about religion or story. The few cut-scenes and bits of exposition it contains appear to have been crudely cobbled together in Poser, using curiously static sets and bland, turgid character models. 'Wooden', that's the word for it.

So, while there's hypothetically a plot about Daniel, who dies and finds himself in purgatory with a quest to kill Satan's armies, it's mostly a load of guff. It's just about the violence; the THUNK! of it.

Once you realise that, it makes overlooking the confusingly myriad selection of level settings less of a big deal. Painkiller jumps you from derelict mental asylums to palatial opera houses, from cable cars over snowy chasms to medieval villages. Your enemies are World War II soldiers, witches on broomsticks and demonic samurai. Attempting to link these ideas together rationally defies sense; just give in to the THUNK! of it.

Or ZAP! of it, for that matter. That's the sound it makes when you electrically charge a throwing star and punch it into the ground at the feet of your enemies. Depending on how many foes are standing around at the time it's either a single ZAP! or a ripple of them. Either way, it ends in the hiss of smoke as it steams from enemy corpses.

THUNK! ZAP-zap-ZAP! Hissssss. These are the simple joys of Painkiller - and this is a game that's constructed only from simple joys. Whereas most games have room for some level of deeper analysis - what was the level designer trying to communicate with the placement of this texture? - Painkiller resists this trend. It has no deeper message to communicate, merely the solid THUNK! and ratatat zap-ZAP! of the core action - because that's all it needs to shine.

Number of Times Completed: Once. Currently replaying.

Random Trivia: Like Half-Life 2 and Crysis 2, Painkiller fell foul of code leaks ahead of release. A full multiplayer alpha was leaked on the Internet four months ahead of launch - the source was never found.

Painkiller was an excellent game and the tarot cards made some of the challenges that bit more worthwhile. Killing the hammer weilding daemon in less than 90 seconds was impossible without one or two of them. Loved it, might re-install it actually.

I never got round to playing this. I played the demo and thought it was pretty damn good fun. I think the more recent example of this type of game is Bulletstorm, which tbh was a good blast from start to finish - some of the set pieces were amazing.

Stick me in an arena, spawn a load of weapons, give us a load of players and lets fight.

You might want to play Resistance 3, it brings back health packs and the giant backpack-O-guns and their tons of fun to use. Online isn't so solid but there is a lot of good meat on the bones of that game. It does feature some newer features like sprinting and perks for online play but it does feel more like a game made in the 90's.

Stick me in an arena, spawn a load of weapons, give us a load of players and lets fight.

I gotta agree with that.... Painkiller was a great game....First game I played online was Quake 2, deathmatch was just so much fun, team games were good too...I even got dual ISDN put in to get a better ping on the DM servers...used to cost me a fortune cos we still had to pay for the phone time back then! LOL
Nowadays the games just don't seem quite as much fun as just spawning into an arena with like 20 other players and a bunch of guns and just fragging the hell out of each other! :-)

Fantastic game, great graphics (on that time of course), great heavy metal music, lots of creatures to kill.
I remember that level were you had to kill lots of nurses - sexy monsters with huge syrenges in their hands:)

Originally Posted by phinixFantastic game, great graphics (on that time of course), great heavy metal music, lots of creatures to kill.
I remember that level were you had to kill lots of nurses - sexy monsters with huge syrenges in their hands:)

its a awsome game, reviews hit it quite badly as well scored quite low which was odd as for the time the graphics was some of the best and my god it ran sooo smooth and the sound track. how could you not love a simple first person, I would perfer to play it than COD imo

Originally Posted by phinixFantastic game, great graphics (on that time of course), great heavy metal music, lots of creatures to kill.
I remember that level were you had to kill lots of nurses - sexy monsters with huge syrenges in their hands:)